


stained green

by cosmic_creeper (MissusMonster)



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Humor, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mickey POV and all of the language that goes with it, Popsicles, i really have no idea what this is?, i think it's kind of funny anyway, set between 1x03 and 1x06, timeline is all over the place okay, with flashbacks to kid!Mickey and kid!Ian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:37:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7153874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissusMonster/pseuds/cosmic_creeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Mickey sees Ian after the baseball thing is also the first time Mickey realizes that green is his favorite color.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stained green

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing for this fandom, and I'm not even sure if this makes sense or not. Based on the idea that Mickey noticed Ian before Ian barged into Mickey's bedroom with a tire iron, and kind of rolled from there and into this?

The thing with Ian Gallagher was that Mickey had been low key stalking him for an uncomfortably long time. Before the bullshit with Ian and Mandy, even before Mickey had started buying his homework from Ian’s brother Lip. If Mickey were honest with himself (it happened every once in a while, fuck off) he’d been keeping tabs on the guy since they’d played little league together and Mickey had tried to impress Ian by pissing all over first base.

 

Whatever. It’d been top of the ninth, they were losing, and Ian was on second looking sad as shit. He couldn’t just do _nothing_. And it worked anyway: Ian had laughed until his face was as red as his hair while everyone else stared in open-mouthed shock. So he hadn’t even given much of a fuck when the baseball commissioner had banned him for the rest of the season, and the one after that. Worth it.

 

Of course, that had been before Mickey knew why his stomach felt weird whenever he looked at Ian. Not just Ian, but at other boys, too. Before he realized that he looked at boys the same way Mandy would a year or so later, the same way Iggy and Colin looked at girls in the neighborhood; before Mickey realized that he was one of the fags his old man was always bitching about.

   

It wasn’t like Mickey was weird about it. The stalking thing. He didn’t peek through windows, or follow Ian around, or hide outside his house or anything. If he happened to walk down North Wallace a few times on nights when shit with Terry got bad (or worse, depending how you looked at it), and if he felt just a little bit warmer, a little bit _better_ when he passed by 2119, well. That wasn’t anyone’s business but his own.

 

Mickey just liked to keep an eye on the guy, make sure no one was messing with him too much. He didn't go around kicking everyone's ass that looked at Gallagher the wrong way; if he did that, he'd never get anything else done. Guy was a gay ginger living on the south side; might as well walk around with a fucking sign on his back that said _fuck with me_. If Mickey sometimes got the weird urge to hide Gallagher under his bed so that no one could pick on him, nobody else needed to know that, either.

 

*

 

The first time Mickey sees Ian after the baseball thing is also the first time Mickey realizes that green is his favorite color. It was still summer, only a few weeks before school was supposed to start again, and Lip and Ian were at the park a few blocks over from North Wallace. Mickey was only there because Mandy had begged him to take her so she could swing on the swings, and he had to make sure no one had taken his spot at the very top of the jungle gym anyway. They hadn’t, but Ian was sitting in the gravel under it, happily eating a rapidly melting lemon-lime popsicle. Sticky green juice had soaked into the front of his dirty white tee-shirt, and Mickey was thinking about swiping it for himself, maybe sharing it with Mandy too. He was pretty hungry; there had only been a handful of cereal crumbs left that morning for breakfast, and it was already afternoon with no promise of lunch on the horizon.

 

But the thing was, Mickey didn’t like it when Ian looked unhappy, and he probably would like it even less if Ian was unhappy with _Mickey_. Knocking Ian to the ground and stealing his popsicle would make Ian unhappy, Mickey was pretty sure. He ducked through the rusted bars of the jungle gym, trying to figure out a way around this problem when Ian solved it for him. (He didn’t know then that a decade later this would become a trend, unless Ian himself was the problem. Then again, that was Gallagher in a nutshell: a fucking bundle of problems and solutions wrapped up in a pretty ginger package.)

 

Ian was flicking rocks with one hand, stirring up gravel dust, peering up at Mickey with a dumb smile on his face. He took a huge bite, grin fading at the coldness, and thrust the rest of the popsicle toward Mickey.

 

“You want some?” he asked, words weird around the ice on his tongue, and Mickey could only stare at him. That strange feeling was back in his stomach again, the one that almost made Mickey want to smile.

 

Mickey didn’t smile, but Ian did, waving his hand around and flinging melted popsicle gunk everywhere. He snatched the wooden stick out of Ian’s hand and thought about saying thank you.

 

“Yeah, whatever,” he muttered, rolling his eyes when Ian’s grin just grew wider and juice dribbled from the corner of his mouth. The green staining Ian’s shirt and now Mickey’s hand was just about the same color as Ian’s eyes, and he kind of wanted to say that too but wasn’t sure why. Instead, he stuck the popsicle in his mouth, tasting lemon-lime, wood, and Gallagher spit, and climbed to his spot at the very top of the jungle gym.

 

He spent the next half-hour ignoring Ian and feeling sorry for not sharing with Mandy until Lip dragged Ian away and Mandy got bored enough to go back home.

 

*

 

The first and only time Mickey pays for anything at the Kash and Grab, Ian is leaning over the counter, eating a lemon-lime popsicle. It’s been a bitch of a July, the humid air thick with sweat and even Mickey had hacked a pair of sweats off at the knee; it was just too goddamn hot to suffer, even if he did look like a fuckin’ tool. 

 

The store is air-conditioned, but it’s an ancient-ass system, barely enough to push out a weak breeze. There’s an industrial fan set up in one corner, loud, droning blades pushing around the hot air, and the cold rush from the beer cooler in the back of the store is the only relief Mickey’s had from the heat all day. He grabs two Buds, glass necks immediately sweating where he holds them between his fingers and stands in front of the open door for a long second before letting it fall shut.

 

Stealing from this place is practically routine by now, and Kash can kiss his ass (Mickey knows all about Gallagher and that creepy fuck; dude is fucking lucky that the worst Mickey’s given him is a detached retina), but Mickey pauses on his path toward the door. Gallagher hasn’t moved from his spot behind the counter, practically sprawled across the thing, looking as cool and collected as Mickey knows he’s _not_. He’s still working his way through the fucking popsicle, doing a far neater job of it now than when they were kids, but there’s still a long, green streak winding its way down Gallagher’s pale forearm.

 

Mickey realizes he’s been standing there longer than is really explainable when Gallagher slowly raises an eyebrow at him, eyeing the beers and the tube of BBQ Pringles Mickey has wedged under his arm. Gallagher doesn’t say anything, so he’s either given up on trying to curb Mickey’s shoplifting, or he’s just too fucking hot to bother at the moment. Mickey knows that he needs to snap the fuck out of whatever has come over him, but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from Gallagher’s mouth, where his pink lips are wrapped around the bright green ice, tongue peeking out to catch stray drops of melting juice.

 

Gallagher’s cheeks hollow out as he pulls the popsicle out of his mouth with a loud _slurp_ and it hits Mickey like a fist to the gut. It’s a physical effort to swallow down the groan that threatens to slip out, and he completely misses the way Gallagher eyes him shrewdly.

 

A green-stained hand is extended slowly across the counter, and Mickey flashes back to jungle gyms and gravel dust as Gallagher asks, “You want some?”

 

For a second Mickey wishes he was eight again just so he _could_ take it, and Mickey knows that if the store weren't completely deserted, he would have had to do something that makes his stomach lurch in a terrible way. As it is, he nearly loses his grip on the damp bottles of beer, and he drops them on the counter as a cover.

 

“Fuck off, freckle dick,” he mutters, throwing the Pringles down too. “Just ring this shit up so I can get my happy ass out of here.” Mickey can feel his eyebrows climbing high on his forehead as Ian stares at him in blatant shock. “Or you could take your sweet fucking time and keep on wasting mine.” He digs in his pocket and comes up with a ten dollar bill that’s as wrinkled and sweaty as his balls, and tosses it at Gallagher’s head. (He starts to think of his balls and Gallagher’s face some more, and motherfucker he _needs to get out of here_.)

 

“You have freckles, too,” Gallagher says as he’s counting out Mickey’s change.

 

“What the fuck did you just say to me?”

 

“It doesn’t make sense for you to talk shit about my freckles,” Gallagher drops a handful of coins on the counter, giving Mickey a thoroughly unimpressed look. “You have them too.”

 

“I will literally kill you; you know that right?” Mickey’s walking backward out of the store; purchases clutched to his chest, change clutched in a fist. “Fuck you, and your fucking freckles.” He kicks the door open, the heavy sole of his boot _thunking_ against the glass.

 

“Whatever.” Ian leans back over the counter, sticking the mostly-melted popsicle back in his mouth, garbling his words. “See you around, Mickey.” 

   

 


End file.
